GEORGE I.
With George the First the Whigs came into power, and soon after the new
King’s accession, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and the former Lord
Treasurer, was sent to the Tower on the charge of having advised the
French King as to the best means for capturing the town of Tournai.
Harley had resigned his Treasurer’s staff three days before Queen
Anne’s death, and on the 10th of June 1715, he was impeached by the
Commons, of whom only a short time before he had been the idol, and
committed to the Tower. His courage never wavered, although he was
left to languish for two years in the fortress, and at length, on
petitioning to be tried, he was acquitted in July 1717. He died seven
years later, aged sixty-two. Lord Powis and Sir William Wyndham soon
followed Lord Oxford to the Tower, but the latter was very shortly
after set at liberty without even undergoing a trial. Wyndham was
member for the county of Somerset from 1708 until his death in 1740; he
had been Secretary of State for War and Chancellor of the Exchequer to
Queen Anne, as well as Master of the Buckhounds. His talents and his
eloquence made him one of the foremost men of that brilliant age, and
Pope sang his praises:
“How can I Pult’ney, Chesterfield forget,
While Roman spirit charms, and Attic wit;
Or Wyndham, just to freedom and the throne,
The Master of his passions and our own?”
Another distinguished prisoner at this time in the Tower was George
Granville, Lord Lansdowne of Bideford. Descended from that race of
heroes, the Grenvilles of the West, of whom Admiral Sir Richard of the
_Revenge_ was the most famous, and grandson of Sir Bevil Grenville,
killed at the Battle of Lansdowne, George Granville belonged by race
and conviction to the party of the Stuarts, and, too proud to seek
safety in flight, as did so many of his contemporaries at the accession
of the House of Hanover, he remained in England, and even protested
from his place in the House of Lords against the Bill for attainting
Ormonde and Bolingbroke. Strongly suspected of favouring the cause of
James Stuart, Lansdowne was accused of having taken part in a plot
for raising an insurrection in the West Country, where his name was a
pillar of strength, “being possessed,” as Lord Bolingbroke said, “now
with the same political phrenzy for the Pretender as he had in his
youth for his father.” The plot was discovered, and at the close of
September 1715, Lansdowne and his wife were committed to the Tower and
kept there in close confinement until all danger of insurrection had
passed away, and until the rising in the North had been crushed. In
Queen Anne’s time, Lansdowne had been sung as
“Trevanion and Granville as sound as a bell
For the Queen and the Church and Sacheverell.”
[Illustration: _View of the Tower in the time of George I_]
In 1710 he had succeeded Walpole as Minister for War, but he prided
himself more upon his literary gifts than upon those of his birth and
rank, or upon his political eminence. He wrote poetry, sad stuff, and
plays which were worse than his poems, for in these he out-Wycherlyed
Wycherley. The plays of the days of the Restoration not excepted, there
is nothing more indecent in theatrical literature than Granville’s “The
Old Gallant.”
The famous rising in Scotland in 1715 in favour of the son of James
II., the Chevalier de St George, or, as his adherents called him,
James the Third, brought many of the leaders of that ill-starred
rebellion to the Tower, and some to the block. Of the latter the
young Earl of Derwentwater was the most conspicuous. James Radcliffe,
Lord Derwentwater, was the only Englishman of high birth who took up
arms for the Jacobite cause in this rebellion of 1715. He appears to
have been a youth of high merit, and was only twenty-six when he was
persuaded to throw life and fortune on the side of the Chevalier. One
who knew him writes “that he was a man formed by nature to be generally
beloved.” His connection with the Stuarts was possibly brought about by
the fact that his mother, Mary Tudor, was a natural daughter of Charles
II., and also that he was a Catholic by birth. He was a very wealthy
landowner, with vast estates, which, after his execution, were given to
Greenwich Hospital. They brought him in, including the mines, between
thirty and forty thousand pounds a year, a great fortune in those days.
His home, from which he derived his title, was situated in the most
beautiful of the English lakes, the lovely Lake of Derwentwater in
Cumberland, and was called Lord’s Island.
Derwentwater had been taken prisoner at Preston, with six Scotch
noblemen, William Maxwell, Earl of Nithsdale, Robert Dalziel, Earl
of Carnwath, George Seton, Lord Wintoun, William Gordon, Lord
Kenmure, William Murray, Earl of Nairn, and William Widdrington, Lord
Widdrington. They were brought up to London with their arms tied behind
them, their horses led by soldiers, and preceded by drums and music, in
a kind of trumpery triumph, and imprisoned in the Tower. Much interest
was made on their behalf in both Houses of Parliament; in the Commons,
Richard Steele pleaded for them, and in the Lords, a motion for reading
the petition presented to both Houses, praying the King to show mercy
to the prisoners, had only been carried against the Ministry by a
majority of nine. An address was presented to George the First, praying
him to “reprieve such of the condemned lords as deserved mercy.” To
this petition George, or rather, his Prime Minister, Robert Walpole,
answered that the King would act as he thought most consistent for
the dignity of the Crown and the safety of the people, thus virtually
rejecting the address. Many of those who had places in the Government
and had voted against the Ministry were dismissed from their offices.
[Illustration: _Window in the Cradle Tower_]
The trial of the Jacobite lords commenced on the 9th of February, and
lasted ten days. Wintoun, the only one of the prisoners who pleaded
“not guilty,” was the only one pardoned; the others were condemned to
death, Lord Cowper, the Lord High Steward, pronouncing sentence on the
29th of February as follows:—“And now, my Lords, nothing remains but
that I pronounce upon you, and sorry I am that it falls to my lot to
do it, that terrible sentence of the law, which must be the same that
is usually given against the meanest offenders in the like kind. The
most ignominious and painful parts of it are usually remitted by the
grace of the Crown, to persons of your quality; but the law in this
case being deaf to all distinction of persons, requires that I should
pronounce, and accordingly it is adjudged by this Court, ‘That you,
James, Earl of Derwentwater, William, Lord Widdrington, William, Earl
of Nithsdale, Robert, Earl of Carnwath, William, Viscount Kenmure, and
William, Lord Nairne, and every of you, return to the prison of the
Tower, from whence you came, and thence you must be drawn to the place
of execution; when you come there, you must be hang’d by the neck, but
not till you be dead; for you must be cut down alive; then your bowels
must be taken out, and burnt before your face; then your heads must
be severed from your bodies, and your bodies divided each into four
quarters; and these must be at the King’s disposal. And God Almighty be
merciful to your souls!’”
Widdrington and Carnwath were released by the Act of Grace in 1717,
and Lord Nairne was subsequently pardoned, the four remaining noblemen
being left to die.
At ten o’clock in the morning of the 24th of February, Derwentwater
and Kenmure were brought out of the Tower in a coach and were driven
to a house known as the Transport Office, on Tower Hill, facing the
scaffold, which was draped in black cloth; there they remained whilst
the final preparations for their execution were being carried out.
The first to be led out was young Lord Derwentwater; as he mounted the
scaffold steps his face was seen to be blanched, but beyond this he
showed no other sign of emotion in that supreme moment, and when he
spoke to the people it was with a firm voice and a composed manner.
After praying for some time he rose from his knees and read a paper
in which he declared himself a faithful subject of the Chevalier St
George, whom he said he regarded as his rightful King. There was some
roughness upon the surface of the block, which Derwentwater perceiving,
he bade the executioner plane it smooth with the axe. He then took off
his coat and waistcoat, telling the headsman to look afterwards in the
pockets, where he should find some money for himself to pay him for
his trouble, adding that the signal for the blow would be when for the
third time he repeated the words, “Lord Jesus, receive my soul,” by
stretching out his arms. He was killed at one stroke. Thus perished in
his twenty-eighth year a man who was loved by all who knew him, rich
and poor, and whose memory still lingers in his beautiful northern lake
country in many an old song and ballad.
There is a curious legend connected with Derwentwater’s death to
the effect that after his execution, the peasantry rose and drove
Lady Derwentwater from Lord’s Island, believing that it was at her
instigation that her husband had joined the Jacobite rising; a ravine
near their old home, through which Lady Derwentwater is supposed to
have fled, still goes by the name of the “Lady’s Rake.” On the night
of his execution a brilliant “aurora borealis” lighted the northern
skies of Derwentwater, which the people in that district interpreted
as being a signal of Heaven’s displeasure at the death of the popular
young Earl; and the aurora is still called in the North, “Lord
Derwentwater’s Lights.”
[Illustration: _The Earl of Derwentwater._
(_From a Contemporary Engraving._)]
After the scaffold had been cleaned, and every mark of the first
execution removed, Lord Kenmure was brought out from the house in
which he had waited whilst Derwentwater was being put to death, and
came on the scaffold accompanied by his son, two clergymen, and some
other friends. Kenmure, unlike Derwentwater, belonged to the Church of
England. He made no formal speech, but expressed his sorrow at having
pleaded guilty. He told the executioner that he should give him no
signal, but that he was to strike the second time he placed his head
upon the block. It required two blows of the axe to kill him.
Kenmure had married the sister of Robert, Earl of Carnwath, who was
one of his fellow-prisoners, but who was respited and pardoned. By
judicious management, Lady Kenmure was able to save a remnant out of
the forfeited estates of her husband, and, later on, George the First
returned part of the family estates to her and her children.
Some of the crowd who had gone to Tower Hill that morning in the
hope of seeing three of the Jacobite lords beheaded, must have
been surprised when only two appeared; the third doomed man, Lord
Nithsdale, had made his escape from the Tower a few hours before his
fellow-captives were led out to die.
Lord Nithsdale’s escape on the eve of his execution reads more like
a romance than sober history. But it was his wife who made the name
famous for all time by her devotion and undaunted courage. All hope
seemed lost after the Address for Mercy had been rejected by the King,
and all idea of respite had indeed been abandoned except by the brave
Lady Nithsdale, who was the daughter of William, Marquis of Powis, and
was born about the year 1690. On hearing of the capture of her husband
at Preston, Lady Nithsdale had ridden up to London from their home,
Torreglas, in Dumfriesshire, through the bitter winter weather, and,
although not a strong woman, had endured all the hardships of the long
journey and the anguish of anxiety regarding her husband, with heroic
courage.
Before leaving Torreglas she had buried all the most important family
records in the garden. Accompanied by her faithful Welsh maid, Evans,
and a groom, she rode to Newcastle, and thence by public stage to York,
where the snow lay so thick that no mail-coach could leave the city for
the south. Nothing daunted, Lady Nithsdale rode all the way to London.
On her arrival in the capital, her first object was to intercede
for her husband with the King. She went to St James’s Palace, where
George was holding a drawing-room, and sat waiting for him in the long
corridor on the first floor, through which the King would pass after
leaving his room before entering the state rooms. Lady Nithsdale had
never seen George the First, and in order to make no mistake, she had
brought a friend, a Mrs Morgan, who knew the King by sight. When George
appeared, “I threw myself,” Lady Nithsdale writes, “at his feet, and
told him in French that I was the unfortunate Countess of Nithsdale,
that he might not pretend to be ignorant of my person. But seeing that
he wanted to go off without taking my petition, I caught hold of the
skirt of his coat, that he might stop and hear me. He endeavoured to
escape out of my hands, but I kept such strong hold, that he dragged
me on my knees, from the middle of the room to the very door of the
drawing-room. At last one of the Blue Ribands who attended his Majesty
took me round the waist, while another wrested the coat from my hands.
The petition, which I had endeavoured to thrust into his pocket, fell
to the ground in the scuffle, and I almost fainted away from grief and
disappointment.”
There was no time to be lost, and after this last chance of obtaining
a hearing from King George had failed, Lady Nithsdale knew that she,
and she alone, could save her husband’s life. To this almost hopeless
task she now devoted all her mind and all her courage.
Returning to the Tower, where she had already been on several
occasions, she pretended to be the bearer of good news. On this
occasion she only remained long enough to tell Lord Nithsdale the
plan she had formed for effecting his deliverance, after which she
returned to her lodgings in Drury Lane. There she confided her plan
to her landlady, a worthy soul, named Mills, and prevailed upon her
to accompany her to the Tower, together with Mrs Morgan, after some
arrangement had been made in their costumes, to which “their surprise
and astonishment made them consent,” writes Lady Nithsdale, “without
thinking of the consequences.” On their way to the fortress Lady
Nithsdale entered into the details of her plan. Mrs Morgan was to wear
a dress belonging to Mrs Mills over her own clothes, and in this dress
Lady Nithsdale would disguise her husband, and so transformed, he could
make his way out of the Tower. It was a bold scheme, and was admirably
carried out in every detail.
On arriving at the Governor’s, now the King’s, House, where Lord
Nithsdale was imprisoned, Lady Nithsdale was only allowed to bring one
friend in at a time, and first introduced Mrs Morgan, a friend, she
said, of her husband, who had come to bid him farewell. Mrs Morgan,
when she had come into the prisoner’s room, took off the outer dress
she was wearing over her own, and into this Lord Nithsdale was duly
introduced. Then Lady Nithsdale asked Mrs Morgan to go out and bring in
her maid Evans. “I despatched her safe,” she writes, “and went partly
downstairs to meet Mrs Mills, who held her handkerchief to her face, as
was natural for a person going to take a last leave of a friend before
his execution; and I desired her to do this that my lord might go out
in the same manner. Her eyebrows were inclined to be sandy, and as
my lord’s were dark and thick, I had prepared some paint to disguise
him. I had also got an artificial headdress of the same coloured hair
as hers, and rouged his face and cheeks, to conceal his beard which
he had not had time to shave. All this provision I had before left in
the Tower. The poor guards, whom my slight liberality the day before
had endeared me to, let me go out quietly with my company, and were
not so strictly on the watch as they usually had been, and the more
so, as they were persuaded, from what I had told them the day before,
that the prisoners would obtain their pardon. I made Mrs Mills take off
her own hood, and put on that which I had brought for her. I then took
her by the hand, and led her out of my lord’s chamber; and in passing
through the next room, in which were several people, with all the
concern imaginable, I said, ‘My dear Mrs Catherine, go in all haste,
and send me my waiting-maid; she certainly cannot reflect how late
it is. I am to present my petition to-night, and if I let slip this
opportunity, I am undone, for to-morrow it is too late. Hasten her as
much as possible, for I shall be on thorns till she comes.’ Everybody
in the room, who were chiefly the guards’ wives and daughters, seemed
to compassionate me exceedingly, and the sentinel officiously opened
me the door. When I had seen her safe out, I returned to my lord, and
finished dressing him. I had taken care that Mrs Mills did not go out
crying, as she came in, that my lord might better pass for the lady
who came in crying and afflicted; and the more so that as he had the
same dress that she wore. When I had almost finished dressing my lord,
I perceived it was growing dark, and was afraid that the light of the
candle might betray us, so I resolved to set off. I went out leading
him by the hand, whilst he held his handkerchief to his eyes. I spoke
to him in the most piteous and afflicted tone, bewailing the negligence
of my maid Evans, who had ruined me by her delay. Then I said, ‘My
dear Mrs Betty, for the love of God, run quickly and bring her with
you; you know my lodging, and if ever you made despatch in your life,
do it at present; I am almost distracted with this disappointment.’ The
guards opened the door, and I went downstairs with him, still conjuring
him to make all possible dispatch. As soon as he had cleared the door,
I made him walk before me, for fear the sentinel should take notice
of his walk, but I continued to press him to make all the despatch
he possibly could. At the bottom of the stairs I met my dear Evans,
into whose hands I confided him. I had before engaged Mr Mills to be
in readiness before the Tower, to conduct him to some place of safety
in case we succeeded. He looked upon the affair as so very improbable
to succeed, that his astonishment, when he saw us, threw him into
such a consternation, that he was almost out of himself, which, Evans
perceiving, with the greatest presence of mind, without telling Lord
Nithsdale anything, lest he should mistrust them, conducted him to some
of her own friends on whom she could rely, and so secured him, without
which we certainly should have been undone. When she had conducted him,
and left him with them, she returned to Mr Mills, who by this time
recovered himself from his astonishment. They went home together, and
having found a place of security, brought Lord Nithsdale to it. In the
meantime, as I had pretended to have sent the young lady on a message,
I was obliged to return upstairs and go back to my lord’s room in
the same feigned anxiety of being too late, so that everybody seemed
sincerely to sympathise in my distress. When I was in the room I talked
as if he had been really present. I answered my own questions in my
lord’s voice, as nearly as I could imitate it, and walked up and down
as if we were conversing together, till I thought they had time enough
thoroughly to clear themselves of the guards. I then thought proper to
make off also. I opened the door and stood half in it, that those in
the outward chamber might hear what I said, but held it so close that
they could not look in. I bade my lord formal farewell for the night,
and added, that something more than usual must have happened to make
Evans negligent, on this important occasion, who had always been so
punctual in the smallest trifles; that I saw no other remedy than to
go in person; that if the Tower was then open, when I had finished my
business, I would return that night; but that he might be assured I
would be with him as early in the morning as I could gain admittance
into the Tower, and I flattered myself I should bring more favourable
news. Then, before I shut the door, I pulled through the string of the
latch, so that it could only be opened on the inside. I then shut it
with some degree of force, that I might be sure of its being well shut.
I said to the servant, as I passed by (who was ignorant of the whole
transaction), that he need not carry in candles to his master, till my
lord sent for them, as he desired to finish some prayers first.” What
an admirable wife was Lady Nithsdale, and what a devoted maid to her
was her “dear Evans.”
[Illustration: _The Tower from Tower Hill_]
Lord Nithsdale got safely out of London in the suite of the Venetian
Ambassador,—whose coach and six were sent some days after his escape to
Dover,—disguised in the livery of one of the Ambassador’s footmen. From
Dover he succeeded in getting to Calais, and later on to Rome.
Although Lady Nithsdale had succeeded in rescuing her lord from the
scaffold, her self-devotion did not end there, her task, she thought,
was still incomplete. In spite of the personal peril she herself ran if
found in England or over the border, for the King was mightily annoyed
at the ruse by which she had snatched her husband from the jaws of
death, Lady Nithsdale determined to protect her son’s estates, which,
owing to the attainder of his father, were now Government property. Her
first step was to recover the papers she had hidden in the garden at
Torreglas. “As I had hazarded my life for the father,” she writes, “I
would not do less than hazard it for the son.” Attended by the faithful
Evans and her groom, who had accompanied her upon the memorable ride
from York to London, Lady Nithsdale returned to Dumfriesshire. Having
arrived safely at Torreglas, she put a brave face upon her errand, and
invited her neighbours to come and see her as if she had been sent by
the Government itself. On the night before these invitations were due,
this most astute and courageous lady dug up the family papers in the
garden, sending them off at once to a place of safety in the charge of
a trusty retainer. Before day broke she had again started on her return
journey to the south, and while the Dumfries justices were laying their
wise heads together, and consulting whether they should or should not
give orders for the seizure of Lady Nithsdale, she had put many miles
between herself and them. When the good folk of Dumfries arrived at
Torreglas, they found that the lady they sought in the name of the law
had given them the slip.
It is pleasant to picture the impotent rage of George Rex when he heard
of this second defiance of his kingly authority; he declared that Lady
Nithsdale did whatever she pleased in spite of him, and that she had
given him more trouble than any other woman in the whole of Europe.
Lady Nithsdale joined her husband in Rome, where they lived many years
together, he dying in 1749, and his devoted wife following him to the
grave soon afterwards. She rests in the beautiful Fitzalan Chapel,
near Arundel Castle. One hopes that the faithful Welsh maid, Evans,
was with them till the end. According to Lord de Ros, Lady Nithsdale’s
portrait, painted by Godfrey Kneller, still hangs in her Scottish home.
“Her hair,” he says, “is bright brown, slightly powdered; with large
soft eyes, regular features, and a fair complexion. Her soft expression
and delicate appearance give little indication of the strength of mind
and courage she displayed. Her dress is blue silk, with a border of
cambric, and over it a cloak of brown silk.”
Another of the Jacobite lords, Wintoun, also escaped from the Tower.
Little is known regarding the manner in which he broke his prison and
thus cheated the headsman, but it is supposed that he managed to saw
through the bars of his window, having previously bribed his gaoler
to let him be free and undisturbed in his work of filing the iron. In
his case there were no romantic details, or, if there were any, they
have not come down to us. Of Lord Wintoun’s escape, Lord de Ros writes:
“Being well seconded by friends of the cause in London, he was conveyed
safely to the Continent.”
Another large batch of prisoners who were suspected of being Jacobites
came into the Tower in the year 1722, the most notable of them being
Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, Lords
North, Orrery, and Grey, Thomas Layer Corkran, Christopher Layer, and
an Irish clergyman named Kelly. Of these, the last was the only one
executed on the charge of high treason.
The plot in which these persons of varying degrees were accused of
being implicated, was to seize the Tower, and raise a rebellion in
favour of the Chevalier, an idea which goes to show that the old
fortress was even as late as the days of our first Hanoverian sovereign
regarded as an essential to the assumption of the supreme power in
the country. Atterbury was attainted and banished, after undergoing a
strict imprisonment, which he endured with much patience from the 24th
of August 1722, until the 18th of January in the following year.
“How pleasing Atterbury’s softer hour;
How shines his soul unconquered in the Tower,”
as Pope has sung it. Atterbury never returned to England, dying after
eight years of exile in France.
In 1724 the Earl of Suffolk was committed to the Tower “for
granting protection in breach of the standing orders of the House of
Lords,” whatever that crime may have been, and in the following year
Lord Chancellor Macclesfield was imprisoned there “for venality and
corruption in the discharge of his office.”
[Illustration: _Middle Gate_]